Why is the beaver a symbol of Canada?

The beaver became a symbol of Canada because the fur trade in beaver pelts drove the European exploration and economic development of the country from the late 1500s through the mid-1800s. The Hudson's Bay Company, chartered by King Charles II on May 2, 1670, was built on the trade in beaver fur, and the company's coat of arms still shows four beavers around a shield with the motto 'Pro Pelle Cutem' ('a skin for a skin').

Beaver pelts were prized in Europe because the dense underfur could be felted into waterproof, broad-brimmed hats that became the height of fashion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Trade between French and later British merchants and Indigenous nations including the Cree, Anishinaabe, Innu, and Wendat created the canoe routes that later became the country's first highways. Fort networks established by the Hudson's Bay Company and the rival North West Company shaped the geography of present-day Canada.

Parliament made the beaver an official emblem of Canada on March 24, 1975 through the Act to Provide for the Recognition of the Beaver as a Symbol of the Sovereignty of Canada. The beaver had already been on Canadian iconography for more than a century by then: it appeared on the country's first postage stamp, the Three-Penny Beaver of 1851, designed by Sir Sandford Fleming, and on the Canadian five-cent coin since 1937.

Beavers also represent the country in living form. The species Castor canadensis is the second-largest rodent in the world and is found in every Canadian province and territory. Conservation efforts in the early twentieth century pulled it back from near-extinction caused by the fur trade itself, and the beaver is now central to wetlands restoration projects across the country.